HOGHOLE

November 23, 2017

AIKO ROUDETTE

St. Vincent & the Grenadines | 2013 | 15 mins

“HOGHOLE,” is an award winning film short film made up of composite Super 8 and HD footage shot and based in the island of St. Vincent. The word ‘Hoghole’ refers to the specific patch of land in St. Vincent where my house stands. My family can no longer live there because of unprecedented crime levels in the island. The subtext of this film, therefore, is a reexamination of what Home means, when it, as an ideal and as a physical space, is lost, or, more accurately, forcibly stolen. It attempts to address the furious internal discord that emerged within me when this sanctuary was violated and we were forced to leave.

About Aiko

What does it mean to begin in and belong to an island, where no one begins or belongs? What does it mean, when suddenly you experience a rupture and your sense of self (predicated on fragmented geography/a hobbled together mosaic of opposing colloquialisms) is broken, bent, light under water? What about when we see that everything, absolutely everything, is revolving in a motion of constant push and pull? No wonder we feel split, spread, torn. For example, what could possibly be pure emotion, that which is not a mix of all emotions (particularly those that are “opposite”)? Love (and all capitalised emotions) generate their magnificence from the vibration of terror.

I was not born in the isle of St. Vincent, but in England. We adopted the island in 1992 when I was two years old. Twenty-one years later we have been fully expelled. Our house has been broken into too many times, our lives have been threatened, every time we try to go back something happens and we have to leave again. Pulled by exquisite beauty, pushed by intolerable violence, bearing the fears “what if we’d been home when they broke in? what if we’d entered the growing ranks of those murdered during burglary?” These have been real and actual concerns for the past eight years.